COVID-19 has pretty much changed lives of the people who stay home and follow the norms, not the people who go out often and think ‘Oh it’s okay, nothing can happen to me.’

When it is half past eight in the morning, I still do not wake up for my first period of school which starts at nine. Exactly one minute before it turns nine, my mom is finally able to wake me up for my school. She usually tries waking me up an hour before my school starts, but she is never successful. After almost an hour and a half has passed since I wake up, my first period gets over and I go to the dining room to eat my breakfast and vitamins. Why do young, healthy teens who exercise well need to have vitamins? They are already fit enough to kill the virus if it enters their body. But I just do it for my parents’ sake.

After six hours of schooling, I eat my lunch while watching a movie. Usually, I am not at all allowed to watch television because once my eyes are set on the screen, it does not tend to easily look at any other direction. But some days, we do watch a movie of either of my parents’ choice during lunch. After almost three or four months of quarantine, I started to go to my tennis classes two days a week just to refresh my muscle memory. I did not want my hands to forget that I hit tennis balls with them, and my legs to forget that I need to run after the ball on court with their help.

As I just mentioned – I go to my tennis classes, and I consider myself luckier than many of those who are only able to either play video games on their computers or study. But I also know they these people are safer from the virus than I am. Now, you might think – ‘Which kind of parents can allow their child to go out during these horrific times?!’

Let me tell you one thing. My parents ONLY let me go out for my tennis classes UNDER SUPERVISION. They do not allow restaurant foods now. Only homemade biryani, homemade burnt chocolate cake, homemade pizza and homemade papri chat. You get what I am trying to say, right? People are going out to malls to buy dresses for festivals, but my parents on the other hand say only online shopping. I know this is an internet generation, but I have always loved to take hundreds of mirror selfies wearing the outfits in front of the mirror in the trial rooms (I know I exposed a lot of people, sorry) and look at the mannequins wearing the beautiful OOTDs… ‘Outfit of the Day’ – in the lingo of the Gen Z.

During the afternoons, it is either a nap time or my tennis class. Then I have studies – because during quarantine, what else way would be better to utilise the free time other than studying? I am pretty sure that no one will miss the pun here. After 4-5 hours of study, we have dinner, which is the most interesting part of the day because it’s a break after a prolonged study time. We all need breaks. I just take too many of them.

School, assignments and getting ready for weekly tests take up half of a student’s day. On top of that, if we do extra-curricular activities, that takes up a few more hours and the remaining time, we sleep. Now that we are getting so much free time, other than whiling away the time during quarantine, we should get our lazy-self up from bed and do stuff that we were unable to do because of less time. I did a lot of things that I never thought I could manage the time for. Now that I’ve done it, I am really glad.

I hope you did too. (other important stuff except for studies, watching movies and playing games)

Prisha is a teenager living in Kolkata and likes to make new friendships. She is a student of grade 10 with varied interests. She is a sports enthusiast, plays competitive tennis and is learning to play golf. She is training in Indian classical vocal and wants to take lessons on keyboard someday soon, she loves contemporary western music and Demi Lovato is her favourite musician of the day. She is an avid reader of teenage romance and has recently developed interests in non-fiction. Bruno, her Indie pet dog is her best friend and companion for after supper evening strolls. Economics is Prisha’s favourite subject and she aspires to study development economics when she goes to university. She wants to write about the trials and tribulations of teenagers, the angst and joys of growing up through the teenage years. She can be reached at her email bhattacharjeeprisha@gmail.com and prisha.bhatt her Instagram handle